Ceci, cela or ça: which one should you choose in French?

A 2010 CMLF study counted, across 91 literary texts published after 1950, 586 instances of "ceci", 3,679 of "cela" and 4,493 of "ça". The form textbooks teach first is the rarest of the three, and the contrast between the first two is not about distance but about direction.

How many demonstratives does French have, and which ones are neutral?

The system is closed: the full list runs to fifteen forms. The CCDMD worksheet on the French demonstrative pronoun sorts them into five series: masculine singular "celui", "celui-ci", "celui-là"; feminine singular "celle", "celle-ci", "celle-là"; neutral "ce", "c'", "ceci", "cela"; masculine plural "ceux", "ceux-ci", "ceux-là"; feminine plural "celles", "celles-ci", "celles-là". The neutral agrees like the masculine singular.

Only three forms are neutral: they stand in not for a masculine or a feminine noun but for a thing, an idea, a whole sentence. "Je préfère cette robe à celle-ci" picks up a feminine noun; "Celui qui a fait ça est un artiste" picks up a person with "celui" and an action with "ça". That is the same move the pronouns "y" and "en" make: swapping a phrase for a short word. And as with noun gender, the hard part is not the list but the choice inside it.

If you speak English, the trap is built into your own system. English has a two-term pair, this and that, organised on distance: near me, away from me. You will therefore look for a distance contrast in French, and French has a direction contrast instead. "This is what I think" and "I think that" both work in English without forcing you to decide which way the sentence points. In French the choice between "ceci" and "cela" is precisely that decision, and nothing in the English pair prepares you for it.

What does the rule actually say about "ceci" and "cela"?

The Office québécois de la langue française gives it in two steps. Its entry on the distinction between ceci and cela first explains that "ceci" points to what is near the speaker and "cela" to what is further away, like "voici" and "voilà". Then it adds the criterion that does the real work: "ceci" announces what is about to be said, "cela" refers back to what came before.

Its examples say it better than any definition. "Retenez bien ceci : je ne renoncerai jamais à ma liberté." announces. "Les employés sont autorisés à partir dès 17 h : rappelez-leur bien cela." refers back. Same logic for the set phrase: "cela dit" sums up what precedes before adding a qualification, and the entry calls it logically preferable to "ceci dit", a form it describes as less frequent but still acceptable.

It closes by noting that "cela" is tending to displace "ceci". It says nothing about "ça", and nothing about register.

Which of the three forms will you actually meet?

This is where the numbers move the rule. In "Le sens cataphorique de ceci, cela et ça" (CMLF 2010), Michel Achard counted the three forms in 91 post-1950 texts from the Frantext database: 586 "ceci", 3,679 "cela" and 4,493 "ça".

In other words, in published literary prose, not in café conversation, "ça" is already the most frequent of the three, and "ceci" is about seven times rarer than "cela". The standards body's entry, the one meant to help you choose, does not mention the commonest form at all. Only the CCDMD worksheet says it, in a single line: "Cela" can be reduced to "ça" in familiar style.

Ceci announces, cela refers back: what do the figures show?

Achard sorted every instance by whether it points backwards or forwards. Of the 586 "ceci", 298 point back (50.85%) and 221 point forward (37.71%). Of 594 "cela" analysed, 559 point back (94.10%) and only 26 forward (4.37%). Of 523 "ça" analysed, 420 point back (80.30%) and 101 forward (19.31%).

So the rule holds, but not in the shape it is taught. It is not that "ceci" announces and "cela" refers back: it is that "cela" almost always refers back, and that "ceci" is the only one of the three to announce in more than a third of its uses. The contrast is directional, and it is lopsided.

The practical upshot, and this is a common mistake: if your sentence announces something, "ceci" is the right choice and very nearly the only one. If it picks up what you have just said, "cela" and "ça" will both do, and register decides between them.

What do these numbers not tell you?

Four caveats, all of them from the study itself.

• The totals analysed are not the totals counted. All 586 "ceci" were examined, but only 594 "cela", drawn at random from 3,679.
• The "ça" sample comes from a single book: the 523 examples analysed are taken from the 2,057 instances in Simone de Beauvoir's "Les Mandarins". That percentage describes a novelist before it describes the language.
• The corpus is literary, and the study does not separate speech from writing. You cannot conclude from it that "ça" dominates in spoken French. What you can say is stronger: "ça" already dominates in published prose.
• The article lists 110, 7 and 101 examples across its three forward-pointing configurations of "ceci", which comes to 218, while its table announces 221. The three row totals, on the other hand, add up (298 plus 221 plus 67 is indeed 586). So we quote the raw counts and the table percentages, and leave that detail aside.

One last marker, from a different source and a different register: in a corpus of spoken French recorded in Brazzaville between 2003 and 2004, twelve texts and 56,668 words, Edouard Ngamountsika counted 534 demonstrative determiners out of 4,960, that is 10.76%, more than the possessives. The demonstrative is not a rare ornament. But that corpus describes French as spoken in Congo, not French in general, and it covers determiners, not the three neutral pronouns.

Which leaves a three-step decision rule. Look at where your sentence points: if the thing comes after, write "ceci". If it comes before, choose between "cela" and "ça" according to the person you are talking to. Then read it back: if you are still hesitating, what you needed was probably "ce" ("fais ce que tu veux"), and none of the three.

A list of forms and a rule about direction can be read alone, and our level test will tell you where you stand. But saying "ça" or "cela" to the person in front of you is decided while speaking. At Frenchee, teachers are qualified native speakers, classes are live, one to one or in groups of three to five, with no subscription, and starting from scratch changes nothing here: register is learned at the same time as the form.

Sources

• Michel Achard, "Le sens cataphorique de ceci, cela et ça", CMLF 2010 proceedings
• Office québécois de la langue française, Distinction entre ceci et cela, Banque de dépannage linguistique
• Edouard Ngamountsika, study on determiners in spoken French in Congo, CMLF 2010 proceedings